


Mental Compatibility

by provocation



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It, Hallucinations, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-13 18:33:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14118384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/provocation/pseuds/provocation
Summary: “If you’re happy in a dream…does that count? The happiness– does it count?” — Arundhati Roy,The God of Small ThingsSet post-Uprising. Contains spoilers.





	Mental Compatibility

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kaijugroupiee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaijugroupiee/gifts).



> This short AU was conceived because of my love for Mal Cobb and all that she is but I quickly strayed far from the original idea. This one goes out to Nicola for consistently posting the best Pacific Rim content. Follow them on Tumblr at [kaijugroupiee](http://kaijugroupiee.tumblr.com/), or come bug me at [montparnasse](http://montparnasse.tumblr.com/) if you notice any inaccuracies in this story, since I'm posting it unedited. Thank you so much; I hope you enjoy!

The first time it happens, Hermann doesn’t realize what’s happening at all. One moment he’s alone watching the cadets-turned-pilots play a rowdy game of basketball. Vik dunks on Renata and a shouting match ensues; a smile tugs at the corner of Hermann’s mouth.

Then he feels someone’s eyes on him and turns, and lets out a startled squawk before he can help himself. Newt is there, looking significantly better than the last time Hermann saw him— his neck twitches at the memory. He’s wearing a tight shirt and leather jacket that flatter his figure very well, and a pair of Ray-Bans that subtract decades from his age. “Hey, Herm,” he says quietly, voice high as ever.

“Dr. Newt,” Hermann blurts out, because he might be one of the smartest humans alive but he is also an idiot. “I mean to say, Newton— I— what are you doing here? They let you out?” Hermann’s excitement to see the other man is tempered by his knowledge that Newt has been locked up under constant surveillance ever since Lambert captured him.

“Nah, I’m still trapped,” Newt replies with a bitter laugh. This only makes Hermann more confused, and Newt taps the side of his skull like that’s supposed to give him any answers. “But I wanted to come see you, and they let me.”

Even a scientist as methodical as Hermann can be prone to the occasional bout of imaginative whimsy, but that stretches reality a little too far. “Mako and Jake let you leave your cell… to come sit with me in the bleachers?”

Newt shrugs, but doesn’t look away from Hermann. They fall into an uneasy silence, until finally Hermann can no longer ignore the impetus placed on him to talk to his only friend. “Are you okay?”

“I’ve been better,” Newt says after a quiet second of contemplation. “But, hey, I’ve been worse too. I’m sure you remember how hungover I was after our presentation in Jakarta.”

The sentence is so undeniably Newt that Hermann turns to look at the other scientist— to _properly_ look at him. His leg is bouncing up and down helplessly, and the nervous tic makes Newt more familiar to Hermann than he has been in _years_. The Precursor indoctrination is one aspect of their distance, of course, but he sometimes thinks that he and Newton had been growing apart even aside from that. It’s a selfish thought that Hermann only allows himself to entertain on his very worst nights.

“Are they talking to you,” Hermann demands suddenly, startling both Newton and himself. His jealousy arrives in an instant but is not so easily dismissed. “Right now, can you hear them? The Precursors?”

Newt looks a little disappointed by the change of subject, but he scrunches up his eyes obediently and then nods. “Yeah, dude, they’re right here. I mean, they’re inside me. Or, they are me— it gets a little twisted sometimes, but I’m never not with them.” He reaches up to take off the sunglasses, and then opens his eyes. His gaze is fixed on Hermann. “Like you.”

Hermann’s mouth is entirely dry, and he tries to remember if he’s had eight glasses of water yet today. Dehydration is a serious health issue that is taken for granted by many, and the look Newt is giving him is turning all the blood in his body to fire, which can’t be good for him either. “What?” he gasps, heroically managing to focus on his confusion instead of Newt’s intense gaze.

“I’m never not with you,” Newt repeats, and then gets to his feet and starts cheering as Amara throws an unlikely but successful shot to score on the other team. Hermann is speechless.

 

 

Later, Hermann goes down to the cell block where he knows Newton is being kept. He knows the quickest route to the cells because he’s come down here almost every day since Mt. Fuji, but he hasn’t ever gone into the room, always too afraid of what he might find.

Visions start to swarm in his head as he approaches the first door, and usually the memories are enough to send Hermann back to his room for the rest of the day. But today he pushes through his trauma, focusing instead on the memories of running into Newt earlier. He opens the door, and Newt’s current surveillance team turns to him in surprise.

“I didn’t think you’d ever come inside,” Jake says, blunt as usual. The idea that everyone in the PPDC is aware of Hermann’s daily gay struggle is beyond embarrassing, but Jake doesn’t look like he’s mocking Hermann. His face is a mixture of surprise and pride.

Mako shows more tact, approaching Hermann cautiously. She gently touches his elbow on his good side. “Are you sure you’re ready?”

Hermann sticks his chin up, nodding. Seeing Newt earlier helped more than he can explain to them, so he steps forward as Jake unshutters the blinds open, thinking he might be prepared for what he sees.

He is wholly unprepared for what he sees; in fact, the sight nearly bowls him over. Mako steadies him with a hand on his arm. Both siblings are staring at Hermann like they’re worried he’s going to collapse, but Hermann only has eyes for the man in the cell.

Newt doesn’t look up at Hermann’s arrival. He doesn’t do anything, and it’s easy to get the impression from his appearance that he hasn’t done anything for several days. His skin looks sickly pale, and the area around his eyes is ugly, inflamed with blood. It’s clear he’s been crying for days. He’s wearing a different outfit from earlier, but that’s the least obvious change about him; everything about this version of Newton is different than the man Hermann had seen only a few hours ago.

“What’s wrong with him,” Hermann hears himself say, and then realizes his hand is pressed against the glass. He might have banged his fist once or twice; he doesn’t remember. “What have you done to him?”

“ _We_ haven’t done anything to him.” Jake sounds severely affronted at the idea. “Man’s doing this to himself.”

“We think he might be fighting them,” Mako adds. Hermann tears his eyes away from Newt to look over at her, chasing the spark of hope he feels at her words. “At least, we hope he is. Having Dr. Geiszler back on our side would be a great asset for learning about the Precursors.”

“Yeah, we’d finally learn something more than how mighty they are, and how we can never hope to defeat them or learn their secrets, and on and on,” Jake says.

Hermann feels like his heart and brain are in two different planes of existence. “I don’t understand,” he mumbles. “He seemed alright earlier.”

There is a very, _very_ pregnant pause in the conversation as Mako and Jake exchange confused looks, and then they both turn to Hermann. “Earlier?” they ask in unison.

“Well, in the gymnasium he seemed much more stable,” Hermann says, and eight seconds after he says it he realizes that something is terribly wrong.

 

 

Five hours of testing later, Hermann is finally allowed to return to his room to sleep, which would be a small comfort if only his room was empty when he got back to it. His head is pounding from all the questions and scans that had been demanded of him, and Hermann for the most part didn’t put up a fight for any of it. He had recounted his conversation with Newt to a room of enthralled doctors, and he had even shamefully explained how he and Newt had once Drifted, but he didn’t see fit to bring it up after Newt’s indoctrination became a problem.

“ _If you two are still Drift-compatible, then you could be used to unlock Precursor intelligence from his brain_ ,” one doctor’s words echo in Hermann’s brain.

“ _Or save him_ ,” a more optimistic doctor had piped up.

“ _Have you ever seen visions of him before this?”_ to which Hermann had replied _no_ , to which the doctor had pried, “ _Does Geiszler appear in your dreams?”_

“ _I don’t feel like that’s pertinent_ ,” Hermann had made the mistake of saying, before the whole room began to loudly tell him exactly why it _was_ pertinent.

Now he’s fighting a Category 5 migraine, and the only recompense he’s been given for all his trouble is a cup of lukewarm tea with cheap honey and the freedom to retire to his room alone. At least, Hermann rationalizes, he should be grateful for the second one— part of him had dreaded a nosy doctor asking to watch him sleep so that they might study his and Newt’s unconscious thoughts at once.

Hermann opens the door to his room and turns the light on, rubbing his closed eyes. He is so exhausted that his already unreliable legs feel like they might shatter without notice at any second. He adjusts with the dimmer switch until he’s reached a level of light that doesn’t hurt his eyes, and then turns around before opening his eyes properly.

When he does, he nearly drops his tea.

Newton is in his bed; almost as soon as Hermann has registered this, he wants to smack himself in the head with his own cane for not predicting it. Of _course_ Newton is in his bed. He’s spent the last five hours being told over and over that the encounter he’d had earlier was simply an illusion provided by his brain and his connection to Newt’s brain, and that there is no quantifiable way as of yet to detect if the Newt he saw was real.

With this in mind, Hermann puts down the remainder of his tea, and reaches for a napkin to wipe off his sticky hand. “Get out,” he says casually to Newt, like this is before everything and Newt is just a thorn in his side instead of a fault line in his heart.

A flicker of something passes over Newt’s face. It might be disappointment, or maybe anger. It’s hard to read emotions while pretending to ignore someone. Hermann pulls his sweater off, and after sparing a sidelong glance to his unwanted bedmate, he pulls his shirt off too. His pants follow, but he leaves his underwear on, and can’t help the rush of blood to his face as he glances over to see Newt still watching him undress.

Trying to shove his embarrassment and almost overwhelming desire away, Hermann climbs into his bed. He can bother with brushing his teeth and taking his meds tomorrow; the main priority is getting this hallucination to disappear. He pulls the covers to his side and Newt doesn’t tug them back, just watching Hermann with a very weird expression on his face.

Just as Hermann’s about to curse, Newt speaks. His voice is painfully real, even if _he_ isn’t. “Kinda getting mixed signals here, Herm. First you tell me to scram, then you strip and crawl into bed with me. I’m not gonna lie, I love it, but a little spoiler for what our next step is here would be much appreciated.”

Hermann’s headache spikes. “Don’t talk to me,” he decides suddenly, and Newt shuts up. That is more of a sign than anything else that he isn’t real. “Don’t talk to me, you’re not real, you’re just a shade of Newton stuck in my head from when we Drifted together. I’m going to close my eyes, and when I open them, you’ll be gone.”

When he opens his eyes, Newt is not gone. He is, in fact, frowning at Hermann deeply, like Hermann has said something offensive. “ _I’m_ real,” he says, and something deep in Hermann’s chest catches alight. He thinks someone struck a match on his ribcage. Newt goes on to insist, “Whatever this is, however we’re talking right now, _this_ is real.”

Hermann feels like his grip on the situation is tenuous at best, and he blinks again, hoping to wipe Newton from existence like a bug off a windshield. Predictably, it doesn’t work, and the hallucination looks almost betrayed like he knows what Hermann’s trying to do. Finally, Hermann caves, because there’s nothing else he can do. “Prove it.”

Behind Newt’s glasses, his eyes light up. It’s a look Hermann has seen on him a thousand times before: the look of “I Can’t Believe You’re Entertaining My Ridiculous Bullshit”. He sits up in bed and the blanket falls to land around his waist. His chest is covered in Kaiju tattoos that seem horribly tragic now that the subject of Newt’s fascination has taken over his consciousness by force. Newt shoves the blanket down further, and Hermann realizes with a rush of embarrassment that this vision of Newt is entirely naked in his bed. He averts his eyes.

“Here’s something you don’t know about me,” and Hermann doesn’t look for a long moment, willing his breathing to calm down. When he finally works up the nerve to look over, Newt is grinning at him, but he doesn’t have his dick in hand like Hermann expects. Instead, he’s proudly showing off art of a small dragon sitting on his hipbone, guarding a hoard of gold. The tattoo is low enough that Hermann would never have seen it without Newton taking his pants off, which they unfortunately have yet to do in front of one another.

Suddenly, Hermann’s brain is working even faster than his normal genius speed, and he launches himself out of bed and gets redressed as fast as possible. His body screams at him for it, but he ignores his own suffering, intent on learning the truth behind these illusions.

He only pauses at the door to spare one last look at the nude Newton in his bed, who looks thoroughly disappointed that Hermann abandoned him. Hermann consigns the minute details of Newt’s body to his hippocampus, and then turns away, practically running down the hall.

 

 

Hermann stopped believing in religion at a very young age, but he puts his life of agnosticism aside for just a moment as he re-enters the room bordering Newt’s cell so that he can thank God for the absence of Mako and Jake. Not that there’s anything wrong with Mori or Pentecost, but Hermann has a sneaking suspicion that they’d be less than comfortable with a crazy scientist escaping his mandatory bedrest to break into the cell of another crazy scientist and demand that he show off his naked body.

It’s easy to enter Newt’s room, and once he’s inside the door disappears behind him almost instantly. The dark, sloped walls make the cell look smaller than it is, and Hermann feels a rush of affection and empathy for his friend. Whatever part of Newt’s brain that hasn’t been tortured to death already can’t be enjoying this confinement. Hermann kneels in front of Newt’s limp body, and for a moment he’s as scared to touch the real Newt as he was to touch the hallucination.

But then his hands move involuntarily and suddenly he’s shaking Newt awake, and Newt wakes up with a horrible choking noise. He looks around quickly, like he doesn’t see Hermann at all, and then when he _does_ see Hermann his eyes narrow to slits. “ _Well, well, well. Dr. Gottlieb,_ ” Newt says, except it isn’t Newt at all. Hermann can’t believe these bastards had everyone fooled for so long. Sure Newt has a lovable face, but eventually _someone_ had to realize all was not right in the land of Geiszler.

“Don’t talk to me,” Hermann echoes himself, thrusting his finger towards not-Newt’s face. Newt looks violently offended but Hermann pays him no heed, focusing instead on getting him up out of the chair. He finds it a harder task than he anticipated; Newt has clearly been drained of all his strength and hasn’t had time or ability to recuperate. He’s practically dead weight, and once Hermann has had that thought, it’s impossible to _not_ think it.

His motions become more frantic, steadying Newt against himself. The weight is too much and he ends up falling back against one of the crooked walls, and Newt falls into him easily. He’s been talking about garbage for a good few minutes now, but Hermann has ample experience with tuning out Newt’s garbage rants. He reaches down to shove Newt’s shirt up his ribs, and the rant ceases— even this wretched, possessed version of Newt is taken aback by Hermann’s forwardness.

“ _Whoa, at least buy a guy dinner first_.”

Hermann’s heart is already racing at the pale green tattoos covering Newt’s stomach, but he swears it stops for a moment as he pulls Newt’s pants down an inch to reveal his left hip. There it is, just like he’d seen it minutes ago; there’s a tiny red dragon looking protectively up at Hermann from Newt’s hipbone.

Hermann is stunned by the simultaneously slow and instant realization that his visions of Newt had been some sort of genuine connection. And then he is stunned by a fist that comes swinging into the side of his face out of nowhere, and he doubles over in pain, gasping his surprise.

Newt rears back to prepare another punch, but before he can, he starts shaking violently and then crumples to the floor. Hermann, still winded from the punch, can only watch from his spot on the wall. He slowly starts to process that Newt must have made himself faint to avoid hurting him, and the thought lifts his heart higher and higher the more he considers it until he feels a sudden guilt for Newt and his heart sinks down into the bottom of his stomach once more.

All in all, it’s not the worst time he’s tried to get into someone’s pants.

 

 

After that encounter, Hermann becomes embroiled in a waiting game of his mind’s own creation very quickly. No further encounters have happened, and he’s starting to drive himself mad with paranoia that it was a fluke, that he’ll never connect to Newt’s brain again, that their connection has been dropped for one reason or another.

He’s contemplating all these things and worse over lunch with Raleigh Beckett, which is never a pleasant experience despite how pleasant Raleigh always is. Their conversation is interrupted every few sentences by either someone begging to take a picture or someone asking an impertinent question, and because Raleigh is Raleigh, he doesn’t turn anyone away or refuse to answer any questions. It would be supremely annoying to Hermann were he at all invested in their luncheon, which at the moment, he is not.

“Could I get a selfie with you,” a teenager begs, leaning over the patio wall to shine their pearly whites at the hero as a display of submission, or affection, or idolatry, or something weird. “Please?”

Raleigh looks to Hermann, silently asking if he minds, and when Hermann ignores the interaction entirely Raleigh turns to the teenager and matches their grin’s width and intensity. “Of course.” He smiles for the camera, and then turns back to his lunch, ignoring their exciting squeaking. “I’m surprised more nerds don’t ask to get a photo with you,” he says to Hermann. “Aren’t you a nerd icon?”

“You’re a nerd icon,” Hermann retorts. The effectiveness of the retort is questionable due to his mouthful of hummus and how shitty a comeback it was, but Raleigh doesn’t seem to mind anyway. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Clearly,” Raleigh pauses and laughs at his own bad joke. “Sure. Go ahead!”

Hermann looks down at his plate, suddenly scared to give a voice to his condition. He finally settles on asking quietly, “Do you ever… see Mako?”

“I see Mako all the time,” Raleigh is puzzled by the question. “Just last week we went to the movies together.”

“No,” Hermann interrupts before Raleigh can try to regale him by explaining his terrible taste in movies. “Do you ever… _see_ her, as in, do you see her when she isn’t there? As a- a side effect of the Drift, perhaps?”

“No,” Raleigh hums, but then he pauses, and a shadow falls across his face as he remembers something. “Uh, not… once, uh, yeah, I saw her once. It was right after Obsidian Fury knocked down her helicopter, before she was even brought to the hospital. I didn’t know what was going on yet, I was just in my apartment and then… suddenly, so was Mako.”

Hermann swallows down a sudden lump in his throat. “What happened?”

“She told me she missed me,” Raleigh squints, trying to remember the exact memory. “And she said something about wanting to stay. It took me a while to even realize anything was wrong, but then I tried to touch her and she was… nothing.” He takes a heavy breath in, trying to balance himself. Hermann is on the edge of his seat. “Later when I found out, I figured it must have been because she nearly died. That’s probably why she… appeared to me, like that.”

A server stops by to pick up their plates, and for once Raleigh doesn’t even give them a friendly smile, consumed entirely by the memory. Hermann nods to the server instead, and then leans toward Raleigh again. “And you never told her about what you saw?”

“I couldn’t,” Raleigh sighs. “She’d think I was crazy. But I think she knew about it somehow; when she woke up, her first words were that she missed me.”

Hermann wants very badly to ask about Yancy, but even someone with a brain as logical as his can value tact. If Raleigh looks this sad at the thought of Mako’s near-death experience, then bringing up his brother’s death is definitely out of the question. He restrains himself, instead folding his hands on the table and preparing to confess. “Raleigh… I’ve been seeing Newt.”

“Oh!” Raleigh beams for just an instant, and then the reality of Newt’s situation returns to him and the bright smile disappears. “Oh, uh, _wow_ , that’s a big twist! I mean, it’s not too surprising; Tendo and I used to talk about it all the time. You two are obviously soulmates, but, um, how does that work with his condition—”

“ _No_ ,” Hermann hisses, acutely aware that he is flushed with embarrassment. “I’ve been having visions where I hallucinate and see _Newt_.”

Raleigh curses under his breath. The reality of what Hermann means finally sinks in for both of them, as Raleigh’s words start to eat away at Hermann’s brain. He can’t stop thinking about the idea that the vision meant Mako was close to dying, and what that must mean for Newt. They sit in empty silence, both drowning in their own sad thoughts.

When their silence is finally broken it’s by a nerd wearing a shirt with Saber Athena on it, who is leaning over the patio wall with a book and a pen. “Excuse me, Dr. Gottlieb— would you please sign my homework? You’re… kind of my icon.”

 

 

For the last few months he’s been trying to put everything far from his mind, but that proves an impossible task when the problem ailing Hermann is happening _inside_ his mind. He manages to distract himself on his drive back from lunch by blasting loud classical music, making him the recipient of multiple strange looks every time he pulls up to an intersection. Hermann doesn’t, as Newt would put it, give a single flying fuck. The music helps drown out any intrusive thoughts that might look like his dying best friend.

He manages to park his car safely at the base and walk through the parking lot. Hermann makes it to the elevator which he counts as a small victory. He presses the button to summon the elevator, and the good news is that the doors open right away.

The bad news is that Newton is leaning against the railing inside, looking dangerously close to curling up on the floor and crying.

“Hey, Herm,” Newt greets him, and Hermann is torn. Half of him wants to rush inside and help hold Newt up against the wall, to hug him awkwardly until he doesn’t look so fragile and vulnerable and _scared_. The other half of him wants to stand still until the doors shut once more, because the Precursors have had more cunning tricks up their sleeve than this before. Hermann knows that the man standing before him isn’t _real_. “How was your day?”

Hermann grits his teeth, still wholly undecided but making up his mind to step into the elevator anyway. The doors close, sealing his fate. He reminds himself over and over again that this isn’t Newt, not really, it’s just— some part of Newt that was left in Hermann’s brain. “Why are you asking,” he mutters, pressing the button for his floor without looking at Newt. “I very much doubt you’ll be able to gain strategic, world-ending intel from learning what I ordered for lunch.”

“Just trying to make small talk,” Newt replies lightly. “I’m not sure how long I’ve got left, so I just thought I’d try to swing by, see what you were up to.”

“How long you’ve—” Hermann pivots to face Newt so fast he nearly falls over. Newt is still propped up against the side of the elevator, and he still looks _so_ miserable, like there’s an important secret he isn’t allowed to tell Hermann. “What are you talking about?”

Newt winces. He’s dressed in his old clothes again, this time wearing regular glasses. “The whole reason I’m here is so I can try to turn you to the cause, obviously, but that’s not why _I’m_ here. I mean, it is, but it’s… fuck, pronouns are hard. I’m just here because I can be, for now. I’m letting myself, or whatever.”

Hermann has never been so confused in his life. Despite what is obviously going to happen, he can’t help himself; he reaches out to touch Newt’s shoulder. It’s meant to be a small comfort, to try to make Newt look less sad. Instead both of them freeze as Hermann’s hand phases right through the clothes, and Newt’s body offers no resistance.

“You’re not here,” Hermann says quietly, trying to ignore how broken his heart feels. “You’re back in your cell.”

“It’s hard to explain.” Newt’s breathing is laboured, like the difficulty of explaining is taking a physical toll on his body. “I don’t know where _here_ is exactly. I see you, and I see what you see, but I don’t know how I got here, and I don’t know how long—” He falls silent again, confirming Hermann’s suspicion that the evil part of Newt’s brain is restraining him from saying everything on his mind. “Drift,” he finally manages to spit out, eyes wide. “Our Drift.”

“Yes, I inferred that.” Hermann can’t stop his excited frustration from poisoning his tone. “But it doesn’t mean anything. I don’t know how to save you from what you’ve become.” He pulls his hand away, and it leaves Newt’s shoulder without a sound or sensation.

Newt’s mouth twists into an expression that Hermann has never seen on him before; it’s a small, wry, sad smile. “You can’t.”

The elevator reaches Hermann’s floor and he wants to tug Newt out with him but he can’t, so they just stand still in silence as the doors open. Hermann unwraps his scarf from around his neck, fidgeting with the head of his cane. What he means to say to Newt is that he’s not going to stop trying to save him; he thinks he might never stop, not even when Newt is dead in the ground and freed from his suffering. What comes out instead is, “You have no idea what you mean to me.”

 

 

It’s late— or early, maybe. He lost track of time at some point last night and he hasn’t tried to readjust since then. Hermann is watching Newt through the heavy window separating his jail cell from the rest of the world, as he has been for hours— or days. Every time he blinks or starts to nod off he gets worried that Newt is going to disappear, and so he pinches his leg to wake himself up. Hermann wishes that human bodies were not so fragile, and that he could evolve past blinking entirely, so that his eyes might never leave Newt’s vulnerable form for a second.

He catches himself; that’s exactly what the Precursor recruiters would _love_ to hear him think.

It’s not likely that his thoughts are being broadcasted to the Precursors, but the thought is chilling anyway. Hermann wraps his arms around his own frame, hugging himself as best he can. Everything feels hopeless, and the longer he watches the cell the lower he sinks into his own despair. He wants so badly to open up the door and speak with Newton again, but he’d rather leave for the night than have to deal with that evilly confident voice.

The door opens behind him and Hermann whirls around, a dozen excuses on the tip of his tongue. There’s really no excuse for how he’d paid off the guard to be able to watch Newt for the night, and anything he says in defense of his actions is going to make him come off as a total creep, so he settles for raising his hands quickly.

“Hello, Dr. Gottlieb.” Mako looks privately amused, and Hermann lowers his hands, mollified. “Can’t sleep?”

The truth is that he hasn’t tried, but he doesn’t want to tell Mako that only to be shipped off to those meddling idiots that call themselves his doctors for another night of intrusive examinations. He settles for nodding, and Mako doesn’t seem to require more of an answer than that, walking over to stand beside him. Her hair is tied up in a tiny bun; she’s let it grow longer since Sydney, but it isn’t anywhere close to the horrible hairdo Raleigh’s sporting right now.

They stand there in companionable if awkward silence. After Newt had been brought back to the PPDC headquarters Mako had been one of the first— and only— people to offer Hermann her condolences. She’d said she knew what it felt like to lose the person closest to you. Hermann remembers being flustered as he tried to deny his closeness with Newt, and then failing that, tried to deny what she was saying at all. He remembers insisting that Newt wasn’t lost, not entirely.

“Raleigh told me you visited him,” Hermann says suddenly, shaking off his memories. Mako glances his way, confused by the sentence. He clarifies, “After the council meeting in Sydney, you visited him. But you weren’t there. Do you… have any idea what I’m talking about?”

Mako hesitates. “I didn’t see Raleigh until much later.” She opens her mouth, and then closes it abruptly. It’s clear she doesn’t want to revisit those memories. Finally her curiosity takes over and she continues, “But I… saw him in my dreams. I didn’t think it was really him, he never mentioned it. And I don’t remember what we talked about.”

“You missed him,” Hermann says, unable to keep the sadness from his voice. “You wanted to stay.”

He might have crossed a line he doesn’t understand by echoing Mako’s words back to her, because she doesn’t reply to that at all. When she finally speaks again her voice is distant, like they’re in different rooms. “How long have you been awake?”

He doesn’t remember.

“Sleep,” she implores him, patting his hand where his knuckles have gone white on the edge of the desk. “You need to clear your head, and rest, Hermann.” It’s the first time Mako has ever used his name and not his surname and title.

He starts to tell her that he can’t, and then realizes that’s not exactly true. “I don’t want to,” he ends up admitting. He’s never heard himself sound this hollow. He doesn’t want to clear his head because right now his fucked-up head is the only thing connecting him to Newt. “I love him.”

Newt doesn’t move from where he’s sleeping in his cell, slumped down in his chair.

Mako doesn’t move either, squeezing his hand gently. She doesn’t say anything to his confession, and Hermann wonders if everyone in the whole world knows how much he loves Newt except the man himself.

 

 

His first attempt at sleep is unsuccessful, and after tossing and turning in his bed for twenty minutes, Hermann thinks he might be too wired to knock himself out. He’s certainly been awake for days now, and somehow that isn’t as concerning as it should be.

To get himself to fall into dreams he tries something he hasn’t done since university; not weed, that’s more Newton’s style. Instead, Hermann lies on his back and focuses on his breathing, trying to enter a meditative state. It works much faster than he anticipates, and when the transition from meditation to dreaming happens, Hermann is too exhausted to even register that he’s fallen asleep.

He dreams of things he doesn’t understand: a world that doesn’t exist, metals that can’t form, creatures that are inconceivable. And yet his brain conceives them, sending Hermann a series of illogical images until he sifts through them all to find the vein of reality he recognizes.

He dreams he’s standing outside Newt’s cell once more, and thinks that Mako would probably be disappointed in him for refusing to let go, but he can’t. It’s impossible for him to stop thinking about Newt’s predicament, even in dreams. What little peace Hermann gained by forcing distance between them has evaporated now, leaving him only with an unshakable determination to fix everything.

The cell is blue and white, like he’s watching someone’s memories from inside their own brain. Hermann has only seen these colours this vivid in the Drift. His focus isn’t on the room at all; he only has eyes for the man slumped forward in the chair, and the giant creature hulking behind him.

Newt’s head is lolling to the side, and he looks like he might already be dead. His companion in the room, however, is _very_ alive, and looks surprised to see Hermann. It lets out an unpleasant noise somewhere between a chitter and nails on a chalkboard, and its hands— _hands?_ — move closer to where they’re holding Newt. The fourteen-foot-tall insect has one claw pushing into Newt’s open neck, skin healed around it. Brilliant light is pouring from the wound, and it almost hurts to see.

Except he’s only dreaming, so Hermann isn’t hurt by any of it. He marches up to what he knows is the Precursor and reaches for the hand on Newt’s neck, taking hold of the alien’s spindly arm and pulling it away effortlessly.

In real life, Hermann would surely be petrified just by making eye contact with a million-year-old alien, and he would _certainly_ not be allowed to touch it, let alone shove it out of his way. But this is just a dream, so Hermann has no problem telling the Precursor exactly where it can shove its ugly claws.

He reaches forward to push the monster away, but before his fingers make contact, the Precursor vanishes. It started to disintegrate the second he pulled its claw out of Newt’s blue neck, and now it is entirely gone. Hermann feels triumphant, and then feels a pang of upset, because there’s no way it could ever be this easy in life. Dreaming gives him confidence and strength that he lacks in reality, and with that in mind, he leans forward to press his forehead to Newt’s. “Wake up,” he pleads to the dream. “Stay with me.”

 

 

“Wake up” are the first words he remembers, echoing in his mind as Hermann awakens the next morning. He opens his eyes, feeling even groggier than normal; there’s no telling how long he slept for, but it doesn’t feel like it was enough. But the second Hermann opens his eyes there’s no hope of him going back to sleep, because he sees Newt beside him in bed once more.

This time his hallucination is battered and bruised almost beyond recognition, and there’s an ugly mark on the side of his neck that looks painful. Hermann is suddenly terrified that this is the last time he’s ever going to see Newt, and that soon the Precursors will completely give up on him and decide they have no more use for him.

Even though he knows he won’t feel a thing, Hermann still reaches to touch Newt, helpless and scared. And then— he _does_ feel a thing. He had attempted to gently brush through Newt’s bruised cheek, and to his surprise, his hand collides with warm skin. Newt is real under his fingers.

“Newton,” Hermann shrieks. The noise is entirely undignified but he can’t find it in himself to care, grabbing his friend by the shoulders and shaking him roughly. “Newt! You’re _real!”_

“Real tired,” Newt mumbles, but he cracks one eye open to look at Hermann, and then both. He smiles, clearly exhausted. “Hey, Herm.”

“Wh— you—” Hermann thinks his brain might crash if he tries to figure things out any faster, and releases Newt’s shoulders. “What’s happening? Are you really here?”

“In the flesh,” Newt says, and reaches for one of Hermann’s hands, returning it to his shoulder. Hermann flushes a deep red as Newt presses their hands together against his collarbone, and then the wound on his neck. Newt sighs, and his smile widens. “Pentecost Junior let me out of my cell a few hours ago, and the first thing I did was come straight here.”

Nearly chewing through his lip as he tries to understand, Hermann suddenly remembers his dream from last night. “That was a Precursor,” he says, and even the name sounds intimidating. A chill rushes up his spine. “The one in your cell. That was— that was a Cardinal.”

“Hell yeah,” Newt laughs. “You think they’d send an Ambassador for a guy as cute as me? Nothing but the best.”

Hermann goes a shade of green. “I walked right up to a Cardinal Precursor,” he says, trembling at even the idea. “I _touched it._ ”

Newt has nothing but fondness in his expression. “Yeah, you’re a badass.”

“So… the visions were real.” Hermann struggles to piece together everything that’s happened in the last two days. “Why did they let you come visit me?”

“I couldn’t tell you, dude,” Newt says, and his tone grows serious. “At first I thought it was your brain summoning _me_ , and then I thought the Masters let me out to try to talk you into helping me escape, but I don’t… I have no idea.” He frowns. “Maybe the connection between us is something they weren’t able to control at all.”

There is a beat between them where Hermann becomes acutely aware of how warm Newt’s neck is, and Newt goes a little pink but doesn’t pull their hands away. Maybe he wants Hermann to keep the entrance point blocked as a comfort, but Hermann hopes it’s something else keeping them from moving.

“Do you remember,” he starts to ask Newt, and then falters abruptly. “Do you remember what I said to you, when you visited me?” Hermann stumbles through the sentence ungracefully, but he doesn’t deflect his gaze from Newt afterwards, looking at him with no small amount of desperation. He prays Newt doesn’t make him repeat his words from the elevator.

Newt hums thoughtfully, and then smirks. “I seem to remember you shoving my pants off in that prison cell,” he says, and suddenly Hermann wishes the Precursors had picked _him_ instead so that he could die and never have to be faced with this discomfiture. “Or something along those lines.”

Hermann, drowning in embarrassment, curls his fingers around Newt’s neck gently. “I apologize,” he says, aware of how nervous he sounds but unable to help it. “That was out of line, I just needed to see the tattoo as a sign that you were yourself.”

“No, I apologize,” Newt says, inching closer. His face falls. “For… for nearly killing you. And for this.”

“This?” is on Hermann’s lips, mouth fully ready to ask Newt to clarify, but he never gets the chance. A moment later he doesn’t require clarification, because the reality of Newt kissing him sinks in. For the first time in his life, Hermann doesn’t have any follow-up questions; he kisses Newt back until they both forget that they’re human and have to breathe.


End file.
